Predojević, Željko.
(2017).
The role of the Croatian oral literature in shaping the cultural identity of southern Baranja.
PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij hrvatske kulture)
[mentor Pšihistal, Ružica].
Abstract
Southern or Croatian Baranja is a part of the Republic of Croatia that never occupied a
significant place in studies and researches of the Croatian humanistic science. We can identify
several reasons for this lack of scientific attention. The first would be the fact that Baranja has
been part of the Republic of Croatia for less than a hundred years and that the ethnic groups
who inhabited the region were migrating during its history faster than in other parts of Croatia
until the Croatian War of Independence. In fact, we can talk about Baranja as a part of Croatia
only since the First World War peace agreement called Treaty of Trianon (1920); before that
the region was a part of the Hungarian Empire. After the territory, which is the present-day
Croatian part of Baranja, was separated from the Hungarian Empire – in humanistic science,
especially historiography – it was named Southern Baranja to differentiate it from the whole
historical and geographical region called Baranja.
In the last two hundred years, the region has been inhabited by different ethnic groups,
but the most numerous were Croats, Hungarians, Serbs, Germans and Romani. Each of these
ethnic groups had their own traditional culture, so it is obvious that the current regional
identity of Southern Baranja should be observed as multicultural and multi-ethnic, especially
if we add different Croatian ethnic subgroups to the overall picture. Until the outbreak of the
Second World War, the region had been inhabited mainly by Croatian ethnic subgroup of
Šokci (among other ethnic groups), which can be divided into two separated groups –
Podunavska group (the one which lived by the river of Danube) and Podravska group (the one
which lived by the river of Drava). After the Second World War, due to agrarian reform and
colonization and starting from 1945, the region was colonized by other Croatian ethnic
subgroups – mainly from the regions of Međimurje and Zagorje (Kaikavian group) and some
from Podravina and Dalmatia. It is interesting to observe acculturalization of traditional
cultures and oral literature of those colonized Croatian ethnic subgroups in already existing
one in the region.
Therefore, the title of the thesis – The role of the Croatian oral literature in shaping
the cultural identity of Southern Baranja – does not refer to the whole Croatian oral literature,
but to the one which Croatian ethnic subgroups in Southern Baranja left to Croatian
humanistic science to study. This thesis deals with the problem of cultural identity of Southern Baranja and tries to
identify what the role of Croatian oral literature from Baranja County was in the process of its
shaping. In the specific geographical territory (Southern Baranja) – in the context of oral
literature and traditional culture – elements of cultural identity have been marked in oral literature from its first records through the 20th century until today. Then, with the methods of
analysis and systematization, we try to observe its elements in today’s cultural representation
and cultural memory. The assumption is that the regional identity of Southern Baranja is
multicultural, that it has been shaped by the multi-ethnic society in the specific geographical
territory and that this regional characteristic has been an important part of shaping a cultural
identity of the region. In other words, we will try to comprehend to what extent the Croatian
part of traditional and/or folk culture, especially the oral literature, has contributed to the
process of shaping the cultural identity of Southern (Croatian) Baranja.
To this day, the oral literature from the Baranja County hasn't been fully explored;
there is only a few field research. Moreover, their findings haven’t even been properly
systematized or analysed as they were undertaken mainly as a part of ethnomusicological
activities. To address this issue, the starting point of this research was a thorough description
of existing records. Because of the overall lack of scientific sources needed for our study, we
used a method of field research which was aimed to gather more oral or ethnographic records.
The research was conducted in villages of Baranjsko Petrovo Selo, Branjina, Čeminac, Gajić,
Grabovac, Karanac, Kneževo, Kozarac, Petlovac and Popovac and the town of Beli Manastir
from the year of 2009 until today. We intentionally chose locations which haven’t been
covered by field works undertaken previously. The main methods of gathering information
from informants and narrators were methods of open interview and open conversation, which
proved to be a good strategy because narrators talked about stories they found especially
important. Afterward, we summarized all new records we had recorded and identified the
main identification markers in them.
We mainly collected folk oral tales – out of 111 oral tales in the corpus we collected
55 of folk oral tales and just about 30 poems because narrators were more motivated to talk
than sing. We mainly used a method of digitalized audio recording; when narrators didn’t
want to be recorded, we wrote down the records. After we collected a part of the corpus,
together with the one we collected from other scripts and papers, we started to systemize and
classify it. Systematization of the corpus was guided by genre and thematic motif guidelines,
respecting customary ritual context. In the process of analysis and interpretation, the markers
of oral literature which have a role in the shaping of the cultural identity of the region were
marked out and they were separately described, analysed and evaluated.
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